Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Modern lighting fixtures, such as LED-based lighting fixtures, can provide multiple lighting effects possibilities. For example, LED-based lighting fixtures may offer end users the possibility of adjusting one or more lighting stings, such as brightness, color temperature, light color, light spot direction, light patterns, light dynamics, etc. These multiple lighting settings possibilities provide users a wide range of flexibility and a pallet of possible lighting options when configuring a single lighting fixture or a lighting system having a plurality of lighting fixtures. However, the multiple lighting settings possibilities may also make determination of lighting settings complex for inexperienced users. Some lighting systems may be provided with one or more default settings to enable a user to select among the default settings and simplify operation of the lighting system. However, such default settings may have one or more drawbacks such as not being universally applicable to all locations, not being universally applicable to all situations, and/or only presenting a limited set of suggested lighting effects for utilization by a user.
Thus, there is a need in the art to assist users of lighting systems in determining lighting settings by storing, suggesting, and/or utilizing one or more lighting settings created by other lighting system users.